Abraham Lincoln

Second Inaugural Address

Saturday, March 4, 1865

Weeks of wet weather preceding
Lincoln's second inauguration had caused Pennsylvania Avenue to become a
sea of mud and standing water. Thousands of spectators stood in thick
mud at the Capitol grounds to hear the President. As he stood on the
East Portico to take the executive oath, the completed Capitol dome over
the President's head was a physical reminder of the resolve of his
Administration throughout the years of civil war. Chief Justice Salmon
Chase administered the oath of office. In little more than a month, the
President would be assassinated.

Fellow-Countrymen:

AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office
there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the
first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during
which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every
point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention
and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be
presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly
depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I
trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope
for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought
to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this
place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents
were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve
the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated
war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive,
and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war
came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that
this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen,
perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the
insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government
claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement
of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and
each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men
should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from
the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not
judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has
been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the
world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but
woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that
American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of
God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed
time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South
this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came,
shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily
pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled
by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall
be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid
by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago,
so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who
shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves
and with all nations.